Is your spam volume increasing?

I had an e-mail from a friend today, concerned about the recent increase in spam finding its way into his business. He knew about ISP spam filters and wondered if his host’s filter had been “wound back” in any way.

The short answer is simply “no”, but for those experiencing a similar increase in annoyance a little elaboration may be a welcome.

This is a cyclical problem that you will see repeated many times in your online life. Very loosely and oversimplified, what happens is this:

Programmers come up with a reasonably effective spam filter with a low false positive rate. A false positive is a legitimate e-mail that the filter wrongly classified as spam. Obviously false positives are not acceptable, as they will often mean the loss of important communications that the addressee wants to receive, or at least would not object to if he ever did receive it.

Conversely, a false negative is spam that is incorrectly identified as “good” and thus slips past the filter, eventually making its way to the addressee’s inbox. This is the stuff that annoys everyone.

The key to understanding the fluctuations of this process is to appreciate that filters aren’t people. Filters are simply software that follows preprogrammed instructions. They cannot reason.

The biggest problem with ISP filters is that their results represent the programmer’s idea of what should be classified spam and what shouldn’t. The classification of a particular message as spam is often a personal assessment, and the ISPs filter doesn’t represent YOUR opinion. Consider the following three e-mails:

E-mail #1: An unsolicited advertisement for Viagra.
e-mail #2: An unsolicited Viagra joke from your best friend.
e-mail #3: A medical newsletter on contraindicators for Viagra.

Messages #2 and #3 are clearly not spam, while message #1 just as clearly is. I’m sure you can see the problem for a conventional spam filter. Easy for a person; very, very difficult for a piece of software.

With such filters, a fair bit of compromise is necessary. Making the filter too stringent results in an unacceptable increase in false positives. Make it too generous and there is a marked increase in the volume of spam getting through.

Now, getting back to my friend’s inquiry…

A professional spammer’s success depends on him being able to get as many messages as possible past as many filters as possible. We’re talking about potential revenue from literally tens of millions of “suckers”. Not exactly small change. So the big guys in this business have programmers and analysts working constantly to figure out ways to beat the filters and get their messages through to the end user.

Thus there’s a constant see-sawing battle as each side tries to outdo the other, and each has their period of being on top.

You can probably understand now why I’m not a big fan of ISP-based spam filters.

With some ISPs and some filters you can have a little bit of control over how the filter works, but not nearly enough for my liking. I’m in business and I can’t afford to lose correspondence through false positives. I want my filters to work my way and identify messages as “good” the way I would.

Yet at the same time I can’t spare the time to wade through an ocean of spam every day.

It may sound like a big ask, but it’s not an impossible wish-list.

The new member’s website (currently under development) has a complete module devoted to understanding and dealing with spam. And yes, I agree with you: who wants to read about spam? But a little time spent addressing the problem properly can save you an enormous amount of wasted time (money!) and frustration.

There are very viable, quite practical solutions – hardware & software – for both individuals and businesses of all sizes.

For now I’ll just leave you with the personal solution (software) I’ve used and recommended to Microsoft Outlook* users for years. It’s called SpamBayes and its quite free.

* Please be aware that Microsoft Outlook and
Outlook Express are NOT the same thing.

Unfortunately SpamBayes’ installation and configuration aren’t quite as friendly as some people might need, but until the new member’s website is open and you get access to the Spam Module, the recommendation is about the best I can do for you. The member’s Spam Module describes everything you need to know about SpamBayes in step-by-step detail, complete with illustrations and screen-shots, and including instructions for e-mail clients other than Microsoft Outlook.

Many businesses that have discovered the value and effectiveness of SpamBayes install it on all workstations as a final line of defence, even though they may have some sort of enterprise filter mechanism in front of the individual workstations.

SpamBayes: http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/windows.html

So to summarize, if you’re not prepared to take personal control of spam filtering, expect to see marked fluctuations in the volume of spam arriving at your computer’s inbox. Asking your ISP to “tighten up” things at his end will certainly reduce the spam volume, but expect to lose a lot of legitimate correspondence that you would prefer to receive.

If you would like to be informed about new developments regarding the upcoming Member’s Website just complete the form below. When it’s open to subscribers you’ll be amongst the first to know.

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